Planet & Environment News

Most studies of how climate change will impact global food production focus on crops, where the effects of higher temperatures and drier weather are well characterized. But the world's meals increasingly include seafood, and the production from fisheries and aquaculture has tripled in the last 50 years. The climate sensitivity of this industry may be just as large as that of crop agriculture, and the interconnectedness of these sectors in many countries raises worries about biodiversity and resilience.

For the future of the planet, there are few research subjects more important than the global supplies of food, water, and energy. To comprehensively study, understand, and inform policy around these complex systems, the next generation of researchers in the physical, social, and biological sciences will need fluency with data analysis methods that traverse traditional academic boundaries.

Since the 2016 election, there has been much discussion of "fake news" -- false stories propagated over social media, usually with a political slant. But climate researchers have been all too familiar with this phenomenon for much longer, pushing back against media reports that push unscientific claims and distorted portrayals of the climate change "debate." So it's no surprise that this same scientific community is leading the charge against unreliable science articles, with a new initiative that drafts researchers into volunteer fact-checking.

Some of the most important crops risk substantial damage from rising temperatures. To better assess how climate change caused by human greenhouse gas emissions will likely impact wheat, maize and soybean, an international team of scientists has run an unprecedentedly comprehensive set of computer simulations of US crop yields.

A drought on the scale of the legendary Dust Bowl crisis of the 1930’s would have similarly destructive effects on U.S. agriculture today despite technological and agricultural advances, a new study in Nature Plants reports. Additionally, warming temperatures in the future could lead to crop losses at the scale of the Dust Bowl in even normal precipitation years by the middle of the 21st Century, CI/RDCEP scientists conclude.

A new modeling approach developed at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory more accurately describes storm behavior, forecasting future rainstorm features that will help clarify flood risk and other climate impacts.

On November 17th, the second Campus as a Lab hackathon brought together 50 people for a night of education, exploration, and collaboration at Saieh Hall. Working with real, building-level data on UChicago campus energy usage, participants conducted preliminary analyses meant to better understand and eventually improve sustainability at the university. Workshops led by representatives from EPIC, the Computation Institute, and UChicago Facilities Services provided information on building automation, energy prices, industry analytics, and technical tools such as visualization, databases, and project scoping.

With a worldwide population projected to top nine billion in the next 30 years, the amount of food produced globally will need to double. A new study from researchers at the University of Birmingham and the Center for Robust Decision-Making on Climate and Energy Policy (RDCEP) shows that much of the land currently used to grow wheat, maize and rice is vulnerable to the effects of climate change. This could lead to a major drop in productivity of these areas by 2050, along with a corresponding increase in potential productivity of many previously-unused areas, pointing to a major shift in the map of global food production.

People at the University of Chicago study climate and energy from a variety of perspectives, including geophysics, computer modeling, law, economics, and molecular engineering. Yet the most immediate way to make a difference on climate change and sustainable energy is to look at our own campus, one of the largest consumers of energy in Chicago. Useful new solutions to reduce energy usage and cut cost could then be expanded to other universities and similar workplaces, a bottom-up contribution to complement larger-scale research.

As climate change drives higher temperatures and more frequent droughts around the world, many predict severe threats to agriculture and food security. But a new study aggregating several climate and crop models suggests that the primary driver of climate change, rising levels of carbon dioxide, may also prove beneficial to crops, mitigating a portion of the damage.